Righteous Fire

Scorching Ray and Malignant Hearts

by

Good Morning Friends. Yesterday I did not really have the mental fortitude for Baldur’s Gate III, so I largely focused on ARPGs for a quick dose of fun. I’ve continued working on leveling my Righteous Fire Templar and that continues to go swimmingly. The big difference with this test character is that I am focused on Scorching Ray in lieu of the more traditional Fire Trap for single-target-DPS. I am still not sure if I will actually go in this direction in nine days when the league start happens, but there are absolutely aspects of it that I greatly enjoy. Being able to burn things down at range is rather nice as they are heading toward you, but I am not entirely certain this makes up for the complete lack of mobility while doing the damage. I think in order to really get the most from this, you would need to invert your body armor and helmet quickly and get Scorching Ray in the six-link. I feel like for bosses this might have significantly higher damage potential, but for anything else… probably less because it was so easy just to drop fire traps as you were pathing through a map.

We have yet another new Atlas Passive spoiler and once again SirGog does an excellent job diving into its potential. If you don’t follow his channel, I highly suggest you remedy that because I find him one of the more valuable resources that deep dives into specific theory-crafting. There is this trend between the passive reveals so far that I am digging. They all seem to be making it easier for someone who has zero experience to get into specific league mechanics from the “big boom” option for Expedition to the “Tower Defense Only” Blight and “No Timer Delirium” and now “No Timer Legion” there is a clear pattern. It feels like we are going to see a new passive for most of the “on map” League mechanics that somehow simplify them without the need for a lot of atlas tree investment. Making Path of Exile a little more “noob friendly” seems like a great course to me.

Speaking of “Noob Friendly” I recorded another one of my dumb videos the other day where I ramble on about my journey so far in Path of Exile over the last four leagues. I had someone on social media helpfully suggest that I need to follow a script and that I need to talk faster… but that is going to be advice that I ignore. I’m not trying to turn YouTube or this blog for that matter into a business and I don’t much care about optimizing my output. However, if you are interested in listening to a twenty-minute discussion of how I progressed from half-assing my way through a build, following a guide, and now branching out to do some of my own things… this might be something for you. I talk through some of the websites and tools that I use and at least talk a little bit about Path of Building. I get that I am absolutely an acquired taste, but I know there are at least a few people out there that enjoy listening to me ramble.

In the “things I did not expect to do” department, over lunch yesterday I decided to check out Diablo IV Patch 1.1.1 aka the one that supposedly fixes a bunch of things. All told thus far it feels like a better experience, but then again… I am only level sixteen and am far from the end of the game that wound up frustrating me. I am trying a Hammer of the Ancients aka HOTA Barbarian, because really… if Barb does not feel better then I legitimately have no interest in this game going forward. Originally I thought to myself that I was going to play through the campaign again because starting a character without the campaign feels a little directionless. However, I got bored with the campaign quests and all of the times when you are having to wait on NPCs to path… and wound up hitting the “skip campaign” button. Diablo IV still feels prodigiously slow to me, and probably always will.

Skipping the campaign at least allowed me to fiddle around with the seasonal mechanic. Malignant Hearts are in the “aggressively fine” territory. One of the nice things so far is that I don’t exactly feel like I am giving anything up since I would normally run Skulls in all of my jewelry, and thus far all of the hearts I have picked up have added additional armor. The effects that they grant tend to be a bit on the lackluster side… but again I am only level sixteen. They are certainly nice to haves, but nothing so far that I would consider “build defining”. It most definitely does not feel like it allows me to create some “broken builds” as hinted at by the devs. The biggest problem I have noticed is… the increase in renown means that you cap out an area long before you can reasonably unlock World Tier 3… and continue gaining renown. So at least in the short term, I feel like I would need to bounce around a lot.

I’ve not consumed my extra special battle pass nonsense, and unless I suddenly decide this is the best thing ever… I am unlikely to do so. It isn’t so much that the seasonal mechanic is bad… it is more that it feels like it should have been a small part of much larger mechanics. Like if you collected hearts and then could use your excess hearts (side note I am only 16 and I already have more than I can use) to craft some sort of key that allowed you to run a loot-filled dungeon full of nothing but corrupted/infected/whatever monsters… it might be a really fun season. They could have taken a page from Path of Exile and given us a way to use a heart to corrupt a dungeon boss similar to corrupting an Essence Monster, that then has a chance to drop special corrupted versions of their normal loot table. The mechanic just feels half-baked and it should have been saved to combine with other seasonal mechanics to make something cooler.

I think quite possibly the biggest negative that I can see is that even though it is lackluster as a whole… they have already said that it won’t be going to the Eternal realm. Diablo IV already feels like it just doesn’t have enough to do or enough interesting variety in its content. Making it so that there is a random chance of getting a Malignant heart to drop that then allows it to replace a gem socket or something going forward would at least add some interesting random chance that could break up other seasonal mechanics. The biggest thing that Path of Exile has going for it, is just how damned much content it has and how much random chance there is that something really interesting is going to happen when you run even the most boring of maps. There is something like twenty-four different league mechanics that have migrated to Standard and all of them CAN influence your content… adding that delightful layer of unpredictability to everything you do.

Blizzard decided that Nightmare Dungeons would be their pinnacle activity that everyone would want to do over and over. The problem is… they are boring, repetitive, and in spite of having over a hundred dungeons… they feature what is essentially a dozen different bosses. In the infamous David S. Pumpkins SNL skit one of the characters asks “Why did you go all in on David Pumpkins?” and I feel like I find myself asking that about Nightmare Dungeons. Clearly, the designers thought they were going to be the big thing, and that has not really worked into reality. Anyways do I think I will actually level my now seasonal character in Diablo IV? Probably not. I will likely return to more Baldur’s Gate III, until the 18th when the Ancestor League launches in Path of Exile, and rapidly forget that I even have Diablo IV installed again.

Searching Crucible Trees

by

Hey Folks! Yesterday I said some nonsense about wanting to finish up the campaign on my Arma Brand Scion. What I did instead… was spend all night last night running maps on my Righteous Fire Juggernaut. This was not necessarily one of those planned event sort of things, but just something that happened. Yesterday I talked a bit about needing to go for Pain Attunement for my Scion, to really make sense of running around in low-life mode all of the time. The problem is the node is way the hell over between the Witch and the Shadow on the passive tree. There are a few alternative ways to get this… the first being a Skin of the Lords but there are currently none available on crucible trade league with the correct combination of socket colors… and even with wrong colors, they start around 8 divines. Another option would be Crown of Thorns, but I am using my helm currently as a pseudo-six-link for Righteous Fire… so I don’t really want to do that.

The last option is to try and find a weapon with a Crucible tree that has the Pain Attunement node. These are apparently sought out because again… the cheapest one I could find is a shitty wand for 8 divines. So it made me remember that during the entire Crucible league, I have been chucking +40 Elemental Damage bases into my bank. The idea was that at some point I would run a bunch of crucibles in order to craft myself the PERFECT Righteous Fire Sceptre. This never happened, but I am finding myself in need of that pain attunement node so I hopped on my RF Juggernaut and tore through T16 maps all night long in search of this one elusive node. The thing is… I don’t even really care about the rest of the crucible tree and would likely craft on any base that I could get that node.

I think Crucible is one of those leagues that will be judged more fondly as time passes. When it was first revealed it had a bit of a “is this all” feeling to it. The league mechanic itself was not terribly rewarding, but it did allow you to do some really weird shit with your weapons and shields. It has also produced a number of completely broken builds. More than anything though, it caused someone like me… who doesn’t do a lot of crafting… to completely change the way I viewed items. Everything had its initial value, but also the possibility to turn into something interesting if it happened to roll exactly the right Crucible tree.

I am legitimately not joking when I say I have many stash tabs crammed full of potential bases for various projects. This is my sceptres tab, but there are also a number of these sitting in a dump tab as well that I never sorted into the proper tabs. I collected Champion Kite Shields because I was hunting for bases that happened to have the node saying that it sold for a unique. I was trying to get some cheap Aegis Aurora, but the market for that item plummeted given how much more common it was thanks to the crucible trees. I also cannot count the number of bows of various tripes that I unlocked Crucible trees for hunting for specific nodes to bolster my Toxic Rain and Explosive Arrow builds. It was not “bing bing wahoo” exciting, but it served as a constant project in the back of my mind which means that the league mechanic as a whole probably did what it was supposed to do.

While it is the end of the league and nothing really matters anymore… I gotta say I enjoyed zipping through maps last night and chasing Crucible trees. Admittedly this only really works because I have a fairly powerful character who can mostly laugh off the extremely rippy nature of Crucible mobs. Essentially my goal while running these maps was 1) to find another +40% Elemental Damage Sceptre base and 2) to find another t16 map… allowing me to basically infinitely sustain this nonsense. For the most part, it worked, but I did have to put a slight tweak into my loot filter just to make sure I was not missing Void and Opal Sceptre bases. I did this a while ago for Champion Kite Shields because I was doing the same thing, trying to sustain so that I always had an item to unlock waiting in the wings and was getting another map to keep churning the process out.

I added a few bonus objectives last night, namely trying to collect new bosses for the Maven with each map run and then eventually running at Maven Atlas when I filled up her bar. This led to more than a few boss maps, but the only one that I stopped what I was doing and ran was the Hunter map I got. Hunter bases are so freaking valuable as a whole that it felt like something that was easily worth doing. I got a Council of Cats card that I had never seen before which was pretty cool. It isn’t valuable really but still sorta neat as it unlocks a series of Feral-Cat-themed items. Maven’s Atlas fight is fairly straightforward on the Righteous Fire Juggernaut and in theory, I am building towards more attempts at the Maven if I choose to go down that path. I am not exactly the biggest fan of that fight as I am not good at the memory game.

One of the things that Path of Exile excels at is giving you missions. It isn’t so much that the game draws a line in the sand and tells you that you have to do this 400 times in order to progress. If it did that it would feel awful. What it does instead is give you the tools to go target farm something yourself, while knowing in the back of your head that there is always a way to just buy your way out of the hole you have dug. I know that at any point I tire of this mission, I can just spend the divines to buy the item I am seeking… but that sort of is what makes the search more enjoyable. Can I do this thing that has value in the game for myself, rather than just hitting the auction house? That is ultimately the question and at least for now, I am enjoying that search.

Self Immolation Phase

by

Good Morning Folks! I’ve continued to descend into madness with my Scion and last night made a number of changes. Firstly you will notice that I have a giant firey ring of death… aka Righteous Fire. At this point you are thinking “Bel, you said this was an Armageddon Brand Build”, which is fair and that is still very much the case. The thing is RF gets used in a bunch of builds that are not necessarily relying on it as the primary damage source. In the case of my nonsense build… I am mostly using it as a flat 41% Spell Damage buff, while also doing a decent job of mopping up little things that get a bit too close. The other thing you might notice is that I have reserved almost all of my mana bar, and half of my life bar, meaning I am living somewhat dangerously.

I’ve opted to play around with Petrified Blood, which is the first time I have really used this as a defensive layer. The idea behind it is that you cannot recover more than half of your life, but the bottom half of your life bar… is “protected” in that 92% of damage taken is doled out to you slowly over time… allowing your regeneration to have time to work. Given that my goal with this build is to largely stack life and regeneration, I thought this might be a viable option, and other than causing me to freak out all the time… so far it appears to be working. I’ve included tooltips for both Armageddon Brand and Righteous Fire so you can see where I am currently. Based on Path of Building my numbers do not look amazing… but I am also dealing with a lot of level 14ish skill gems so that should improve over time and levels gained.

Last night I beat my third labyrinth and finished choosing my second ascendency for Scion. I was leaning towards Chieftan just for the regen, raw fire damage, and ability to cover enemies in Ash. The 10% Strength boost may also be good if I pick back up the ability that converts the strength damage bonus to spell damage. All told I think this combo is probably about as good as it gets for Armageddon Brand Scion. I would probably never purposefully build this way again, but in this experiment, I am just rolling with what I happen to have currently. The notable that I need to figure out a way to pick up is Pain Attunement. Since I am permanently on “Low Life” this will give me a significant boost in damage. I do not believe this can be anointed, but it is available as an option from crucible weapons. I need to sift through my stack of rejected sceptres and see if any of them have it.

I got to Act 10 last night before I went outside to play with Greybie. I will likely finish that up over lunch. I often slow-walk Act 10, but really… the only reason why I tend to do that is to finish up my third Labyrinth before taking another resistance hit. Given that I have already done this… I should probably just finish things up and then begin trying to fix my resists permanently and swap out some gear. I’ve taken my sweet time with this character, mostly because I’ve enjoyed the relaxing leveling process but now I am curious how well it is going to do in early maps. I am having way more fun with this character than I ever expected. When I created it, I legitimately expected it to be a throw-away experience and to never log into it again after beating Dominus. I am super excited about the possibility of what ExileCon might bring, and also really interested to see the announcement of the next FFXIV expansion this weekend as well.

Clearing Delve Cities

by

Hey Folks! I have been recording a series of videos of me playing various games as part of a larger “Bel Bungles” series. I have no clue why but I find some modicum of enjoyment to record short videos of me talking about a thing from a game. Today I am experimenting a bit because normally speaking I do not make a specific blog post when I do one of these. I occasionally reference a video and embed it in another post, but I’ve never really made a post exclusively for one of these uploads. So I am shifting things up a bit and doing just that thing.

Today I figured it had been a bit since I had recorded one of these dumb Bel Bungles videos talking about my Righteous Fire Juggernaut in Path of Exile. So since I mostly do Delve on that character, I decided to post a video of me clearing out a few city nodes down in the mines and talk through some of my thought processes. I have no clue why anyone watches these, but I enjoy making them… and will likely keep making them until I stop enjoying them. Thanks to everyone who is just along for the ride, and hopefully they don’t get too terribly annoying.